Category: United Pentecostal Church | Page 80

Shaking Foundations: The Start of Questions

Someone in an unhealthy church may ask a question like this:

Why did God find me in a UPC church if the teachings are wrong? What is so wrong now that was not wrong then? Why after all of these years do I have questions that rock the foundation of everything I have been taught and believe?

In responding, I could counter with, did God actually find you in a United Pentecostal Church? God was drawing you to Himself well before you stepped foot in a church. The type of church doesn’t matter. Where you were when you opened your heart to God doesn’t matter. It really has no bearing on you and God as our walk is a one-on-one relationship with Him. God could have just as easily met with you in a vacant field or a hot desert. See what I mean?

When we first come to God, we are overjoyed. We want to do anything and everything. We are not looking for things that may be wrong. We may have little to no knowledge of the Bible to know how to discern between true and false teachings. We aren’t expecting to be taught things which are not true.

So, did your church change? Was it different in the beginning? My guess is no. But your perception of it has changed. You are no longer in the beginning happy stages, ready to do anything without question that ones in leadership ask. You’ve now matured. You’ve gained knowledge. You think more critically.

When someone in an unhealthy church starts to question teachings, no matter what they may be, it often does feel like their foundation is being shaken- and in reality, it is. Yet if your foundation is based upon man’s imaginings, then you need it to be shaken, even though it doesn’t feel very good and can be quite scary.

I have found through my own experience, as well as listening to a great many people who have left the UPC or other Oneness Apostolic churches, that God often uses some incident to cause the person to start to look objectively into a matter. What that something is varies greatly. It may or may not have anything directly to do with the teachings themselves.

For me, it started when I helped at the church run daycare for the second time. Events that happened over several months helped cause me to feel that if things didn’t change, I’d be leaving the church.

I ended up voluntarily resigning my teaching position at the end of the summer program and went away for a few weeks and spent some time with UPC friends in the ministry, who knew how things could be at the church. (It has often helped me to go away somewhere while thinking things over.)

When I returned, I heard all kinds of things about a tape recording that the pastor played in a Thursday evening service. It was a Christian radio broadcast on spiritual abuse. The two guests were former members of the church. They didn’t mention the church name or any person in the church. His stated reason for playing it was so members could see what was being said about the church.

I asked to borrow the tape and found that my reaction was not what I had seen in others. I saw some truth to what they shared, though I didn’t agree with everything. Sometimes you have to have things happen directly to you in order to wake up.

I made a copy of the tape and took another trip to a couple who had left the church previously. While they listened to the tape, it was obvious the whole thing was difficult for me. It was painful to start realizing abuses that had taken place in my church and that the pastor played a part in some of it. If you were present, you would have found me pacing back and forth while they sat and listened, making occasional comments.

After my return home, I met with one of the daughters of the pastor and her husband, who had also left. That was an eye opener, too. PKs tend to see and hear many things.

From there I started to attend services less and also looked into the uncut hair issue for women. It wasn’t very long before I knew I could no longer remain. It got to a place where it didn’t even feel like my church anymore. After being a loyal member for just under 13 years, that was an odd feeling, indeed.

For me, my start into seriously questioning things was working in the daycare. I saw people do things against state rules. I was told by the pastor to lie if anyone from the state came when his daughter wasn’t there. (There was supposed to be a certain person there, with college credits, while we were open.) I got a first hand experience of what some others had gone through before me.

It had nothing to do with the church teachings at first. I believe God used a series of incidents to start to remove me from an unhealthy church environment and erroneous teachings.

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Backtracking: Where It Began For Me

My story began a really long time ago with two grandmothers influenced by Bro. Witherspoon and Bro. Fresh and a very young S.G. Norris and other early Oneness preachers. One grandmother was ‘shouting her hair down’ in a Methodist church prior to Oneness and the other came into Oneness with my great grandmother. No grandfathers in the picture –they all died really young.

My great grandmother died in the parking lot of a Oneness camp meeting; she had quit taking her heart medicine because this was a ‘healing’ camp meeting. My very young mother found her dead in the car. One of my grandmothers died in a car/train accident on her way to VBS –it was two blocks away and I remember all the kids (I was ten) going to the altar to pray. My grandma and my best friend (a cousin just a couple of weeks older than me) were two who died in the accident. I still mourn the loss after 50 years.

So I am 3rd or 4th generation Oneness before there even was an ALJC (Assemblies of the Lord Jesus Christ) or UPC (United Pentecostal Church) and of course my dad was a preacher, as were some of his brothers. By the time I got here, it was ALJC for us, but we had friends in the PA of W (Pentecostal Assemblies of the World) and some UPC, though in my area the ALJC and UPC were pretty strong rivals. We were the less strict but still plenty weird.

At one time, the Rambos went to our church and Bucky was our children’s orchestra leader (I played the cymbals 🙂 ) I remember Dottie’s song ‘Come Spring’ was written for my grandmother or dedicated to her. Reba and I were fast friends. I remember Reba contracted meningitis and almost dying. They left around that time and became famous but of course were ‘lost’ 🙂 We absolutely loved Dottie’s singing –especially LAZARUS 🙂 . As a teenager, I sang a lot of her songs at district youth and fellowship meetings.

I grew up having a rare haircut, sometimes wearing pants and my mom even sold Avon at one time and put lipstick on both of us then- almost rubbed my lips raw getting it off before my dad came home LOL. I wore miniskirts as a teenager and had a page boy haircut and wore powder and mascara with no real consequences but I did not get ‘saved’ until I was 18 and in Bible school (ABI- Apostolic Bible Institute).

I went to Bible school because it was my mother’s dream to go and she never had the chance (I just wanted to get away 🙂 .) On my application to Bible school, I remember writing –“I am coming to find out if there is a God and if there is, I will serve him”. I am sure S.G. Norris (then a much older man) got a kick out of that.

I was miserable at Bbible school –still had a page boy haircut and wore ‘natural’ makeup, but felt like I was the only sinner among a bunch of young saints (this is too funny now but then I took it very seriously). I cried nightly and begged a close by friend of the family to come and take me home.

Of course, he called my parents and they called my preacher uncles who called S.G, and without me knowing, the whole Bible school began around the clock prayer and fasting. S.G. called me into his office and told me his ‘story’ of how he received the Holy Ghost –if anyone is interested let me know–it was pretty cool. I had been begging God to speak in tongues ever since I was baptized at eight years old.

Anyway, after a week of the prayer and fasting, I skipped church to play board games with other less spiritual girls in the dorm and got conned into going to the prayer room where I was absolutely struck with tongues and a very personal interpretation and spoke in tongues for over an hour. It was real and changed my life.

I never did really ‘belong’ at ABI but I did get ‘saved’ and made some close friends (some still in church and some not) and then like most of the kids, I found my husband –we all called the school Apostolic Bridal Institute.

My husband was also 3rd generation Oneness but he had been AOG until he was twelve and then his parents were finally won back when he and his brothers went to a Oneness church camp with his preacher uncle and all three received the Holy Ghost and came home wanting to change to UPC. We were a good match –still are –it will be 45 years this December.

OK, that is all the good stuff, it kind of goes down hill from there, but it took me 40 years to finally say enough! I will start the rest of the story later. Thanks for listening –this might just be cathartic. 🙂

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You can’t sit with us!

One of the many unspoken rules of the UPC church is that if you leave the church you leave your friends behind. That has been harder to deal with than I thought it would be.

The friends I had in the church weren’t just my friends because we went to the same church. I liked them because I enjoyed being with them (most of them). They were people that were fun, and interesting, all sorts of personalities etc. I probably would have liked them regardless of where I met them…

Once you leave nothing else matters. How well you got along, commonalities you shared, bonds that were made were all of no consequence. You no longer attend church here thus you are no longer friends.

Were the friendships we shared so fragile, that insignificant that since I left they just dissipate? I left and now I don’t exist?

Now I wish we had met at the YMCA….

Amazing to me how much they talk about reaching the lost and preach about people matter to God but then turn around and make people feel as though they don’t matter at all.

I don’t ever want to make anyone feel as though they don’t matter.

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Beginning Our Work For God

Ok, here goes our United Pentecostal Church story.

In the beginning, newly out of Bible school and desperately wanting to work for God, we had several ‘offers’ to come help churches. We accepted one in Ohio but my husbands District Super uncle convinced us to come to another state and work the campground that summer–he would ‘make it worth our while’. Sounded like fun–but it wasn’t.

I was six months married and pregnant but didn’t know it. I was exhausted but the uncle demanded I get up each morning and help clean and prepare the campground; I literally dragged myself through the tasks assigned, becoming more and more exhausted, but still not knowing it was because I was pregnant and should be resting.

I worked blisters on my hands, had a sunburn, and at one point was stung multiple times by a nest of ‘mud dauber’ wasps flying up my skirt while cleaning a bathroom. After a month, I miscarried on the 4th of July. I was left alone in a strange state, strange city, strange hospital, to watch the fireworks in tears from my hospital bed. My very young inexperienced husband was still ‘working the camp’ as demanded by his uncle.

When I got back to the camp, I couldn’t call my parents because the uncle had a block on his phone (this was before cell phones). It was at least a week before I could let my mother know and by then I was very sick. Our conversation was in front of the uncle and aunt so I was very limited on what I felt comfortable saying and my parents had no idea what was really going on.

I would go sit in a very hot car with all the windows up trying to get warm (in this state small children and dogs died when forgotten in locked up cars) but nothing made me warm. The uncle’s wife demanded I do my husband’s laundry, so I literally dragged myself to the laundry room.

She washed uncle’s white shirts after I finished and they came out with ink on them. She went into a rage and blamed me even though NONE of my husband’s clothing had any ink on it. She demanded I ‘clean’ the washer and dryer of all the ink. I waited until everyone was gone and then actually crawled to the laundry and cleaned the machines.

I felt very alone and desperate. I ended up back in the hospital with an infection and finally got some medication to begin healing. When camp ended, I still wasn’t completely well and we got an offer from a church a few hours away to come help.

The uncle gave us $100.00 for our summer at camp and ‘very generously’ another $100.00 that he said was ‘under the table’, oh and a bag of the disgusting yellow rice we had been eating all summer, along with a pound of butter.

We couldn’t leave fast enough! (an aside) The uncle had adorable twin two year old daughters –he played teasingly with them until he was tired of it and then if they didn’t stop immediately, he beat them with a belt. I cried as much as they did. Neither is in church today. He is dead. The aunt is raising one of their sons; I don’t think they ever married or had other children.

So, the new town was really awesome. The pastor seemed like a nice guy. The pastor’s wife was weird –like the little girl with the curl, when she was nice she was very nice and when she was bad she was TERRIBLE. I was still sick, tired and thin.

They helped us find a roach infested apartment above a garage for around $40.00 a month. I had NO experience with roaches or palmetto bugs and nightly sprayed a ring of bug killer around our bed, blessedly unaware that these things could fly. There was no air conditioning or heat. We had a fan in summer and bought a kerosene heater when winter came.

We both found jobs. Our apartment was painted black and dark purple by the former hippie inhabitants, so the pastor’s wife loaned us money to buy paint to repaint it. We were expected to and did pay 10% tithes and 5% offerings.

I had a car accident and totaled our car. The pastor convinced us that the rapture would happen very soon, so we should buy a van to do church work (we would never have to pay it all off because of the rapture. Oh how young and ridiculously dumb we were.

We worked in the church preparing it and the Sunday school activities and canvassing for children to bring to Sunday school every Saturday pretty much all day, but we were happily married newlyweds and it really was fun a lot of the time. We picked up people for church every church service and a host of kids on Sunday mornings.

The church people seemed to like us a lot and were kind, inviting us to dinner or to go out to eat. We worked really hard and at one time actually had 39 kids in our VW van on a Sunday morning!

The pastor’s wife varied between loving the church people and chasing them off with her sharp tongue. Looking back, I am pretty sure she was manic/depressive but that was before this was such a well known condition. After a couple of years, she had really worn us down and we decided to talk to the pastor; she came in at the end of the talk, and realizing it was likely about her, she attacked. She told me I had a mental problem and needed ‘help’.

I was again devastated and my now getting older and wiser husband decided it might be time to move on. We bought a tiny camper trailer (you could almost touch all walls when standing in the middle of it hahaha). We lived in it while we saved enough money to leave –of course still religiously paying our 15% to the church each week and continuing to donate all our free time.

A lot more happened at this church but I would have to write a book to cover it all. The Sunday before we left, the pastor’s wife organized a ‘going away’ party. Our gift was a painting of the Bible with Acts 2:38 highlighted, painted by an old Oneness preacher, Bro. Hudson I think, in the congregation. We eventually donated it to a Oneness church. It was only 1973 and we had no idea what we would eventually live through 🙂 ; our ideals and altruistic desires were still firmly in place, as they would be for years to come.

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Twisted Word Meanings: Shorn

One indicator of an unhealthy church is when the meanings of words are changed. By doing this, what they teach appears on the surface to be backed by scripture. However, when one discovers that the twisted meaning is not the same as was meant in the passage(s) they use as a proof text, it will help them break from these erroneous teachings.

For those who believe that the word shorn in the Bible simply means to cut without regard to how much, I share with you a great picture demonstration that shows a half-shorn sheep. It is the copyright of photographer Cary Wolinsky.

The word shorn in 1 Corinthians 11 is twisted by some in an attempt to prove a teaching that claims women are never to cut their hair for any reason, not even a fraction of an inch. Some take the teaching even further and claim a woman protects herself and her family by keeping her hair uncut. Ruth Rieder Harvey of the United Pentecostal Church (UPC), has taught that believers replaced Lucifer as the protector and reflector of God’s glory and women accomplish this through following such holiness rules as not cutting their hair. UPC evangelist Lee Stoneking lamented in a sermon, if only Christians knew what witches and New Agers know. If witches can double the power of spells by letting their hair down and shaking it in the wind, what could our [Apostolic] women do with power on their heads?

Oh what great lengths some people take in their efforts to prop up a teaching in order to convince others to believe in and follow their ordinance.

UPC minister Daniel Segraves, in his book Women’s Hair: The Long And Short Of It, attempts to change the biblical meaning of shorn in an attempt to persuade women to follow the teaching. After using three regular dictionaries and three biblical reference books, he states: “That, while ‘shorn’ can mean ‘to cut close,’ it is certainly not limited to that meaning. Indeed, the preponderance of dictionary definitions are on the side of interpreting ‘shorn’ as simply ‘to cut,’ without specifying how much! …While a minority of the definitions could possibly apply to cutting closely, the majority testimony is that ‘shear’ simply means ‘to cut.’

Someone from biblical times would not have related to this conclusion by Segraves. To them, and to Paul who is the author of Corinthians, shorn meant to cut closely, just like is demonstrated in this picture by Wolinsky. People then were very much acquainted with the practice. If anyone had removed an inch of the wool on this sheep and tried to tell people that it was shorn, the onlookers would have heartily laughed. They knew that a shorn sheep was one where almost all the wool had been removed.

Take care to independently search out for yourself what is taught. Check to ensure that the meaning given is actually what was meant in the passage. You may find a night and day difference between scripture and what you hear from the pulpit.

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